Never Coming Home (21 page)

Devlin dipped his head, nuzzling his face into her hair. She was warm and real and she had nothing to do with pictures of tortured flesh. He shifted to hold her more tightly. He’d been out of it too long. Once he’d been able to wade through that sort of crap without being touched. But this
 
…

Mothers, and children. Lost children.

He thought of his own mother, then stopped. No need to go
there
.

‘What is it?’ Kaz must have sensed a change in him. She tipped back her chin to look up into his face. He just shook his head, dumbly. She shifted her hands until they were splayed at his hip bones. Abruptly the tension dropped out of his shoulders. He studied her neck, and the scoop of rosy skin revealed by her slim-fitting cotton top. There was a sweet spot, just there, at the curve
 
… he could taste it already, on his tongue. He bent his head
 
…

Kaz let her head drop back, enjoying the kiss. The feel of this man’s mouth was something she was never going to tire of. He’d relaxed, muscles smoothing out under her fingers, holding her, just poised, against him. His lips whispered up over the length of her neck, to find her mouth, probing gently until her whole body was humming with it. Her whole body. Shivers. All over.

When he picked her up and deposited her on the bed it groaned and so did she. The creak, when he knelt beside her, made his eyes widen. ‘Christ, is this thing going to hold?’

‘I don’t care.’ She was laughing, pulling him closer. He could feel her smile on her mouth and it went through him like a drug. His lips moved on, her jaw, her chin, the tiny soft cleft of dimple. She wound her arms around his neck, still smiling, welcoming him into her warmth.

The bed hadn’t collapsed. Miracles still happened. Kaz was lying sideways across it, Devlin sprawled half on top of her. His eyes were shut, but he was grinning. Kaz felt a proprietary glow. She’d put that grin there. With a groan he flopped onto his back, eyes still shut.

Kaz leaned over to look at him. With guilty indulgence she examined his body, drinking the perfection as well as the flaws. There were a few. Most of the skin on view was mouth-wateringly firm, smooth and slightly tanned.
Everywhere. All over. Hmm.

There were silver, puckered lines of old scars, visible above the elbow and just under the rib cage, and another high on the thigh. Kaz winced. That had to have caused a few moments of panic. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about how the marks came there, of the blows and the pain. Devlin was here, warm, breathing. Reality was out there, on the perimeter, stalking, but she wasn’t letting it in here. She traced the curve of his hip. Warm, sexy. A man’s hipbone as an erogenous zone? Who knew?

‘You keep doing that and we’re not going to make that plane.’ His eyes were
still
shut. His voice sounded hoarse. Obediently she removed her hand. With a groan Devlin found it and moved it back again. Not quite in the same place.

What she could see of the room was spinning. And dark. In the late afternoon? It took a second to realise that her hair was all over her face. Pulling in the deepest breath, she raised herself on one elbow, scooping curls out of her eyes.

‘Damn, but you’re good at this!’

Devlin’s eyes were closed and he was flat on his back again. He raised a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Ditto, sweetheart.’

‘Have you ever
 
–’ She stopped, shocked at what she had been about to say. How could her mind even go there?

‘Have I ever
 
–?’ Devlin prompted. He’d found a pillow from somewhere and propped it at his back. The rest of them were on the floor.

‘It’s nothing.’ She knew her face was flaming. ‘Doesn’t matter. Stupid.’

Her hand fluttered. Devlin caught it and kissed the knuckles. ‘Have I ever done this as part of my job?’ he supplied softly.

Kaz shook her head, appalled at the way he’d read her mind. ‘I have no right to ask that sort of question. I shouldn’t even have thought it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because
 
…
 
’ She was floundering. Devlin had turned her hand to kiss the palm.

‘You can ask, Kaz. I might not always tell you, but you can ask. We do this.’ He glanced around the tumbled bed. ‘I reckon that gives you the right to want to know things.’ He hesitated. He was still holding her hand. ‘Yes. I have had sex as part of the job. Not often. I wasn’t pretty enough for the honey-trap stuff. Thank God.’ He shrugged. ‘And not recently.’ His mouth quirked. ‘These days any of that stuff is down to Bobby. He adores the ladies and they adore him right back, so there’s no harm done.’ He leaned against the headboard, exhaled. ‘I can’t believe that I’m sitting here, naked, talking about Bobby Hoag’s sex life.’

Kaz smiled. ‘You’re fond of Bobby, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t know if fond is the word.’ He grimaced. ‘I’ve got used to having the stupid asshole hanging around.’

‘Will I meet him?’

‘Maybe.’ Devlin thought about it. ‘Yeah. Why not?’ He shrugged off the bed and began to gather up crumpled garments. ‘You want first shower?’

‘We could share.’ She could see that the hopeful look in her eyes almost convinced him, before he decided that someone had to be the tough guy around here. ‘Uh – not if you want to be on that plane. Go on. Shoo
 
–’ He handed her a bundle of clothes, as she scooted off the bed.

‘Kaz.’ She paused in the doorway to the bathroom. His eyes lingered on her silhouette, then up to her face. ‘You want to know anything, you ask.’

Kaz turned on the shower and stepped under it, soaping herself absently as her mind wandered. Her body was still vibrating. She raised her arms above her head, luxuriating in the warmth of the water.

Devlin was an incredible lover. Whoever amongst his bosses had decided that sex wasn’t his metier – well, it certainly wasn’t a woman. Hell, the man oozed sex appeal from every pore.

She paused to let the thought develop. No one could be that stupid. Devlin hadn’t been called on to play the seducer by his bosses, because he simply wasn’t good at it. She knew it as clearly as if she’d been told. He wouldn’t play those sort of games at someone else’s bidding. She stifled a smile. Devlin knew plenty about seduction, but for him it would be something personal and private. There was a guardedness about him. An inner core that was the real man, something she suspected that had its own morality, its own sense of decency. That core was his and his alone. Devlin didn’t share it, didn’t share himself.
And now he’s let you reach in and touch some of that part of him, just brush your fingers over the edge. And told you that you can have more.

She shivered and turned up the thermostat on the shower.

Devlin sat on the end of the bed, his jeans and shirt over his knees, wondering what he’d done. He’d just given Kaz something out of his past. There were maybe three, four people who might remember, who went that far back with him, but he hadn’t seen any of them in years. It had only been a tiny shard he’d given her, but it was still his past. He’d offered it up, unadorned. And she’d accepted it. Strangest of all, he didn’t care that he’d done it. He’d wanted to. He welcomed her curiosity. He just hadn’t expected
 
… that.

With most women, and there hadn’t been that many, it was the scars. She’d seen them, too. Even with his eyes closed, the heat of her exploration had prickled his skin. It had made him feel vaguely ashamed, as if he ought to cover himself. But she hadn’t asked about them, and she hadn’t run.

She’d touched him. Not the scars,
him
. And she had asked, just a small question, and he had told her. And now he wanted to tell her it all. The whole sad, sorry mess that had been his life. Just pour it into her lap. He wasn’t going to. But he wanted to. Looking for what? Absolution? Understanding?

A small sound from the bathroom made him turn that way. Kaz hadn’t shut the door properly. He could see her, standing under the spray. Sated and satisfied to the last atom of his being, he could just watch her and enjoy the sight.

Water ran down her body as she turned and twisted. A body he’d caressed, kissed. She was lovely. Not perfect. She wasn’t a girl and she’d borne a child. She was a woman. She was
the
woman. Devlin felt every muscle in his body melt into stillness

He was in love with Katarina Elmore.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bobby woke slowly.

Cold, darkness, pain, thirst. The last bothered him the most. He was in bad shape. The most economical of movements revealed that he was handcuffed to some sort of pipe work. His shoulder and his upper arm throbbed when he was still, screamed when he moved. Or maybe that was him. Clamping his teeth, he got himself up into a sitting position. Then he just sat like that for a long time, while the sweat cooled and the pain eased back from excruciating.

Christ, he wasn’t used to this. He’d been in worse places, with worse injuries, but he was just so unprepared. He had to focus. This was a kidnap. O’Hara had been a scam. Someone had set him up. He took a second to curse himself. Babes and mega bucks. Greed and stupidity. Reeled in the suckers every time. Then he pushed all that away. Unproductive and a waste of precious energy.

He had to figure this out. He knew how. He couldn’t do much with who. Unless he was meant to die here of dehydration, he’d
find out soon enough. Which would probably give him why. He spared a moment for that. Forewarned was forearmed. As armed as you could be, sitting on your ass in the dark, with your legs cold and your shoulder on fire.

Anyone he and Devlin had pissed off lately? He leaned his head back, gingerly, to rest against the wall. No one. The guy from Wisconsin hadn’t much liked the accidental CCTV pictures of his golf partner teaching his wife the meaning of swing, but he wasn’t going to be doing this. Which meant it was something from the past.
Shit.

Fear flickered in his body and he squelched it. He’d got out of worse than this, and Dev was still out there. Thank Christ he was in Italy, or they’d both have been here, chained to a fucking pipe. Sooner or later Dev would come looking.
Sooner, please God.

Bobby opened his eyes. He hadn’t realised they were shut. Maybe he’d drifted a little. The only question he could do any work on was
where
. Where the hell was he? He couldn’t see much, but there was light of a sort, just ahead of him. A long, narrow strip. Coming under a door. So, the escape route was that way. Hah! Behind him, and under his buttocks, the wall and floor were icy. He could feel the cold seeping into the damaged shoulder, doing it no good at all.
No point in going there.

He explored with his good hand, stretching the fingers as far as he could. Smooth, cold and shiny – tiles. There was a familiar acrid smell, but it was faint, just teasing his nostrils. Urine. The uncomfortable fullness of his bladder told him that he hadn’t wet himself, so the smell was part of the regular ambiance.

Put together with the pipes he was cuffed to, it gave him a bathroom. No – washroom, he decided. He could vaguely make out stalls beyond the door and sinks opposite. At a guess, he was tethered to the wall next to the urinals. The place was clammy but dry. No sound of any water. Disused? A washroom in the centre of a disused building? Old office block? The darkness made sense. This place would always have been lit artificially. Great. He was in an unused office block, somewhere in London. Did he know anyone who owned one, rented one? He dredged his memory, but there was nothing.

He listened, concentrating. Was there any sound that wasn’t him breathing? Anything that would tell him something? There was a distant, periodic rumbling, that he could feel rather than hear, but it made no sense. Other than that, zilch.

He held his breath and shifted his position slightly, easing the cramp that was threatening his right leg. He had to keep the uninjured bits of himself in working order. When whoever it was came back, if they moved him, then he would have his chance. He needed to be ready. He sifted the evidence, looking for patterns.

Whoever had done this wasn’t too worried about damage but didn’t want him dead, or he’d never have made it this far. Comforting thought. He was useful alive. That was a bargaining chip. He needed all he could
 
–

Noise. He stiffened, wincing as pain shot down his arm and across his back. Fighting nausea, he held himself still. Footsteps. Outside.

The door swung open and bounced off the wall. He couldn’t make out the figure silhouetted against the light that stabbed into his eyes.

‘Hello, Bobby. It is Bobby, now, isn’t it? Nice to see you. After so long.’ The soft drawl, with its distinctive lisp, curled into Bobby’s ears. Pain and nausea flared together. With miserable desperation he fought to control the muscles of his bladder. It was a very small victory.

Was his voice going to work? He cleared his throat. ‘Hello, Luce.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Kaz folded her sunglasses and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket. An assortment of bags was lurching unevenly around the carousel. None of them was hers. Devlin’s carry-on was between his feet. His sunglasses were still in place, so she couldn’t see his eyes. He’d seemed – distracted – on the plane. Withdrawn. And being here in the airport was making her itch.